Deutsch
English
Recently, I had fallen sick. A serious cold forced me to spend my days on the couch. We like to imagine sick days as a chance to take a break on a comfy sofa with a nice cup of tea and lots of time to read and maybe even a beloved movie interrupted only by the occasional need to clear our throats. In reality, my eyes were burning, my lungs wheezing and may brain obviously restricting its activity to mere life support. So what harm could there have been in picking up the remote and watching a much-lauded series in one sitting?
I decided to watch "Stranger Things", a series that provides a lovable mix of "E.T.", "Gremlins", "Stand By Me" and other 80s movies. There wasn't much to complain about. Everything seemed solid with a little bit of friendship among outsiders, a few scares, quirky characters, some humor and a dash of "The X-Files". Yet, during episode 3 I noticed something was missing: the emotional involvement and the thrill of anticipation. We used to wait an entire week to find out whether the hero had survived (spoiler alert: he survived) or whether the two lovers finally got together but today, every episode is available on demand right away. And while I slowly and lethargically became one with the sofa, both the plot and emotions just streamed past me. What was the role of that red-haired girl again? Oh right, she was dead. I had already forgotten that detail. Maybe, binge watching wasn't for me.
Binge or marathon-watching is a phenomenon that came about with the continued success of big streaming portals. When cinemas were still calling the shots, events like the "Star Wars marathon" or the "The Godfather night" were legendary but today, everything's available in digital form 24/7. If you wanted to treat yourself to all four seasons of "Star Trek Enterprise" in one sitting, you could. Streaming portals even go so far as to automatically skip to the next episode unless you intervene. I guess they know their customers. Entire evenings, days or nights all turn into binge-watching sprees at the click of a button. That's why fans no longer measure sick days in hours but seasons. A friend of mine was visibly proud he managed to watch several seasons of "The Walking Dead" during his fall vacation. When asked about his other activities, he appeared rather tight-lipped.
Changes in watching behavior pose a real problem for traditional TV stations as viewers are no longer willing to wait for the next episode but instead turn to other media sources. And who'd want to wait for a specific time to watch their favorite series nowadays anyway? Some stations try to remedy this by offering shows online and adding new episodes every week but they're struggling hard to satisfy viewers hooked on instant access and gratification. Even Netflix learned the hard way that, once the hype around a new season dies down and every episode has been watched and discussed online, viewers immediately crave for seconds. When it became known that the new season of "Game of Thrones" won't come out until 2019, the Ashampoo flag was at half-mast for a week and there were discussions about alternative series. Are vikings an adequate replacement for dragons?
The next season is just around the corner
Naturally, Netflix tracks what their viewers watch with astonishing results: one enthusiastic viewer watched the second part of "Lord of the Rings" on 261 consecutive days in 2017 while another viewed "Pirates of the Caribbean" every day. The lovesick also tend to give in to addiction with the schmaltzy "A Christmas Prince" having over 53 regular viewers since its release back in December. All this amounts to 140 million hours of series and movie watching per day and more than one billion hours every week!
The USC Institute for Creative Technologies recently found in a study that over 60% of Americans practice binge watching with the trend continuing on a global scale thanks to ubiquitous streaming portals. The younger the audience, the higher the number of permanent viewers. According to researchers from Australia, these viewers absorb less and less details, though, since our brains simply can't handle the information overload it's exposed to, e.g. when watching 5 episodes in a row. Likewise, the degree of emotional involvement, i.e. rooting for the hero, subsides with prolonged exposure. And let's be honest: this lifestyle doesn't promote social engagement or health either!
I guess it's once again time to invite a couple of friends over. We'll watch a good flick, eat microwave popcorn and nachos, have a drink and discuss both the movie and our lives. It worked back when video rental stores were still around and it'll work again. And when a new series comes out, I'll watch it spread across several weeks. Just like you shouldn't mindlessly guzzle down a good wine, a decent series deserves your full attention - not a brainless zombie on a sofa.
What I would like to know: do you sometimes catch yourself watching several episodes in a row? Do you think that's a great way to spend your free time?
Just a general question: Are you dictating this post? I noticed that you wrote "routing" instead of "rooting" as well as "serious" instead of "series". This is uncharacteristic considering your mastery of the English language. It sounds much more like a Dragon NaturallySpeaking "speako". Just wondering…
Homophones strike again ... No, that was really me and not some voice recognition software. Thanks for pointing those out. I shall be more vigilant in the future. :)
I still mainly view free to air TV in Australia but do have FetchTV as a package component of my phone/internet contract with the phone company but I do not buy movies or series to view at home. I really like the cinema experience better than TV. So I have never binge watched a series unless you count watching two episodes of 'Jake and the Fatman' in a row as binge viewing. [yes I'll admit it I'm into nostalgia viewing].
I really like that old UK espionage series 'Dangerman in monochrome - it was cutting edge technology back in the 60s doing the 'spy' thing. Wouldn't mind a box set of that on the shelf.
But I can see how others would like to view a gripping story as a combined set - trouble is when 'viewing' prepared media we are just receptors of what is being presented and over extended periods that leads to numb of brain whereas reading a story forces us to use imagination to construct the visual in our minds to try and construct what the author saw in their mind when writing.
So yep - binge viewing is not for me.
You can't do ANYTHING online these days without ever other website knowing about it. I went to a flower delivery website (I won't mention Proflowers.com by name) and ordered Valentines flowers for my wife. Since then, every page of my local (online) newspaper and numerous other websites have been deluging me constantly with advertisements for flowers from that website! I mean, I ordered them already, and I'm not going to be ordering them again until next February! I'm leaning toward getting a dark-internet browser and encryption/VPN service just to read my email online!
Hi Sven,
I have a habit of recording 1 - 4 episodes of any programmes that I regularly watch, purely so I can "fast forward" through the advertisements, whilst only watching sporting events "live", advert's and all.
I have recently binge watched a new series over two nights, Brittania (a Sky/Amazon joint venture) as it was so compelling - it was similar in experience to watching a really good film with an extended intermission :). To repeat the experience would take an exceptionally good series that is similarly compelling and loses nothing from doing so - very much the rarity than the norm.
Sven, did all that viewing help you feel better? :) I hope you weren't ill for too long.
Thank you for replying. I don't use Netflix, so unaware of their policies. Perhaps I should have looked first.
I took a look, and yes, the information is on the privacy page. What would put me off subscribing is all of the cookies, beacons and other technologies that it puts onto users' devices. What is more worring is their data collection from other sources, even offline, without disclosing those sources. However, its privacy policy does appear to be more open than other vague policies I've read.
Saying that, I think I'd use a VPN in incogneto mode, well I'd have to because it's not available here.
Actually, I always feel empty and exhausted after 5 episodes. I wasn't surprised to learn that Netflix tracks their users. As a matter of fact, I thought that was a given. All streaming portals are designed in this way to instantly give recommendations and to keep their users watching. Naturally, these portals must collect data to give decent advice and to decide what to promote or produce next based on your watching behavior. I don't really mind this practice and it's ok that they know I like Star Trek Enterprise.
I do not watch TV nor do I subscribe to Netflix etc. However when I was feeling ill mostly due to the unbelievable cold weather I did go to the library. Picked up 4 seasons of Midsomer Murders and watched every episode in three days. Each episode is 90+ minutes.
Is it exercise to get up and change the DVD?
I have a garage chock full of the fancy tools which I used to spend ages dreaming of owning and using when I was a young man. It took me years to buy them and now only robots use spanners and the kid's can't even change a sparkplug? That is if they knew what a sparkplug was when they saw one?
Now I cannot stand at the bench for more than a few minutes due to the onset of a very painful spinal injury. Result is an increasingly rusty collection of expensive metal implements I shall never use all gathering rust and dust in a damp and viciously cold garage.
I rarely watch T.V. the huge volume of gratuitous violence is appalling so every time I see a gun or a knife I just switch off even the news is like an ongoing horror show.. I suppose it's really all about controlling us and taming our aspirations to make us malleable amenable suggestible and compliant. The movers and shakers do this to make us accept the imperceptable impositions of an increasingly treadmill FritzLangEsque society.
So I read some deeply interesting books and quality daily newspapers which are becoming evermore like children's comics every week? Luckily when I feel the urge for involvement I always seem to find some job to do on my two desktop computers. The last few weeks I have been absorbed in changing over to AHCI mode without loosing my Windows 10. Problem was that nothing actually did what it was supposed to do when I tried to do it?
This apparently mundane task certainly took me a good while because for some reason I couldn't do it in Windows PowerShell. So I rummaged round to find out how to change over to Windows Command Line or C.M.D. and when I did so it all worked like a charm.
I suppose it fed my sense of achievement when I did this task but really the computer seems to work exactly the same with only a minor improvement in functionality. It will keep my creative urges in check for a while...
I detach with Love from the mindlessness of the masses. " Happiness is Eternal, by Choice ! " -NJA
http://dickens.wpi.edu/history.html
Same ol' same ol'
How many people want to go back to reading a chapter once a week or once a month of any novel they are involved in?
Movies to TV series strike me as similar to short stories to novels. Both have a place, but you can do far more development in a novel. You think you're going to put that novel down just when it gets interesting so you can build anticipation? Seriously?
I have Netflix and Amazon but am distressed how almost all the new content is series. What happened to good movies ranging from about 90 to 180 minutes with the whole story told at once.
Movies are what I look for and am more and more streaming oldies but goodies through my Roku.
Bring back movies!
Not (yet) fallen into binge watching but tempted when I look at the 29 episodes of NCIS, 23 of another series and so forth that I've got queuing up on the TiVo box. We do tend to take DVDs of series on holiday - but only to watch one episode/evening.
The only other point is that when some of the series tell a story over two episodes I'll watch both (if recorded) back-to-back - but there are, of course some shows (Midsommer Murders for example) that are broadcast as two hours each episode - not to mention films that, now, seem to be all at least two hours long.
Keith
PS Penulitmate paragraph "series" (via typo) = "serious"
I went through several seasons of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD in the same week, and when I discovered Lost, I watched 3-4 episodes every night.
Now I know that Netflix stalks it's users. It should not be collecting data for about what people watch or for how long. If they use that info for marketing or sell it to other organisations, users should get paid for that use of data.
Netflix never made a secret out of their user tracking. Recommendations are based on careful analysis of their users' watching behavior. You could try a different streaming provider but I'm not sure there are any who don't engage in tracking.
TV and social media is a drug designed omake viewers in zombie consumers. An old movie that predicted this is "Videodrome" starring James Woods. Watch it. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086541/
Only once. "Dark sun" had a good write up and I had missed the first episode. I went to i player and saw the episode that I missed. At the end, although the remaining episodes had not yet been officially screened on TV, it went straight into the second episode and then the next and so on.
I watched for a solid six hours (or whatever) and it was a lousy series. A wasted day
Once doesn't count. :)
I don't have the time to binge-watch serials, but at my advanced age the idea is has its merits.
My wife and I are keen TV drama-watchers in the evening and we often find ourselves asking each other, "Who is she?"... "Was he the one who killed the vicar?"... "Have we seen her before?"... and similar questions, as we desperately try to remember what happened in last week's episode. So the idea of watching every episode sequentially seems like the answer to our flawed memories.
However, we're still not prepared to devote that much time to watching TV, so I guess we'll have to continue wondering who the redhead woman is, and which of the brothers shot the tennis coach in last week's episode.
Interesting post. I started us on Netflix a few months ago, and my kids and wife have already binge watched some things. I'm more in the opposite school, where I watch things piecemeal. Can take me a few days to finish one episode.
I feel that the problem isn't just the way content is viewed, but the sheer glut of it. 20, 30 years ago, I could get into a show that was merely okay (say, a 7 / 10), and enjoy it, because it's what there was on TV.
With Netflix, I have dozens of shows which sound interesting at the tip of my mouse, and watching one takes time from watching others, so if the show bugs me in any way, I can just ditch it and switch to another. In short order I can go through them and decide that there's 'nothing good on TV' -- even though years ago I'd have been fine watching any of them.
Always at your service :)
I am fully behind your commentary. It must be hard for young people who have gone straight into this new way of viewing.
As a fan of the police procedural “Castle” (2009 to 2016) which ran to eight seasons, one week at a time, there was plenty of opportunity to discuss the last episode, either with friends face to face or on-line chat groups. Time to really become involved and invested in your favourite characters and in where the show was heading.
Just my thoughts on the subject.
"Castle" is a good example. The series is constantly progressing and the characters developing. Anyone who watches all 8 seasons, each with 20 episodes on average, in short succession will probably see it in an entirely different light than you.
Long retired from tech world retain my intellect and physical strength at 82. Yes, I have Netflix for 5 years, but now find that You Tube channel captures more of my time and my life long learning nature. I appreciate their "what the viewer wants" algorithm.
When I find a series with well developed people characters and story line then I enjoy being with them for evening relaxation. Binge? Well, is one peanut, one cookie, one potato chip, one TV episode enough... no of course not !
Don't have Netflix (or any streaming service) so television watching is confined to FTA and Foxtel (for news & sport).
To me, binge watching is playing back 2 episodes of Doc Martin before real life rears its ugly head again.